Introducing art in its international context, this accessible book explores core issues about how art is made, interpreted, and displayed, without any of the unnecessary terminology. Divided into themes, A Short Book About Art presents new ways of thinking about the relationship between artists and their work, as well as fresh comparisons between works of art from different periods and places. Thought-provoking and stimulating, it is the ideal companion for anyone who wants to learn about art without a dictionary in their hands.

    Freud—once dubbed "the Ingres of existentialism"—has almost single-handedly redefined the figurative painting of our time. No other living artist possesses his ability to paint the texture and thinness of skin over flesh, and his distinctive portraits have a haunting quality that makes them impossible to forget. This volume, with over one hundred superb reproductions of his greatest paintings, pays tribute to one of the most original and accomplished artists of the twentieth century.

    J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. What Do Pictures Want? explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheep—who, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living image—and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm.What Do Pictures Want? offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike.   “A treasury of episodes—generally overlooked by art history and visual studies—that turn on images that ‘walk by themselves’ and exert their own power over the living.”—Norman Bryson, Artforum

    We need not walk far, because paradise is right around the corner." --Hundertwasser Friedrich Stowasser, born in Vienna in 1928, called himself Friedensreich Hundertwasser Regentag Dunkelbunt. True to the colorful variety of his names, he has pursued many activities as a painter, architect, and ecologist, and as "one who awakens identities." This presentation of Hundertwasser's work in all of its different facets is guided by the artist's own view of himself and his purpose. And, because his work is, by nature, virtually inseparable from his biography, his artistic and political actions, and equally so from the "stories" of his (ostensibly) private life, a vivid portrait of the artist takes shape before the reader's eyes. Excerpts from conversations between the author and the artist lend a sense of immediacy and authenticity to the narration.

    While gazing at Rauschenberg's painting Double Feature, Tomkins felt compelled to make some kind of literal connection to the work, and it is in that sprit that "for the last forty years it's been [his] ambition to write about contemporary art not as a critic or a judge, but as a participant." Tomkins has spent many of those years writing about Robert Rauschenberg, whom he rapidly came to see as "one of the most inventive and influential artists of his generation." So it seemed natural to make Rauschenberg the focus of Off the Wall, which deals with the radical changes that have made advanced visual art such a powerful force in the world.Off the Wall chronicles the astonishingly creative period of the 1950s and 1960s, a high point in American art. In his in his collaborations with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and as a pivotal figure linking abstract expressionism and pop art, Rauschenberg was part of a revolution during which artists moved art off the walls of museums and galleries and into the center of the social scene. Rauschenberg's vitally important and productive career spans this revolution, reaching beyond it to the present day. Featuring the artists and the art world surrounding Rauschenberg--from Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning to Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, together with dealers Betty Parsons, and Leo Castelli, and the patron Peggy Guggenheim--Tomkins's stylish and witty portrait of one of America's most original and inspiring artists is fascinating, enlightening, and very entertaining.

    In Formless: A User's Guide, Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss present a rich and compelling panorama of the formless. They chart its persistence within a history of modernism that has always repressed it in the interest of privileging formal mastery, and they assess its destiny within current artistic production. In the domain of practice, they analyze it as an operational tool, the structural cunning of which has repeatedly been suppressed in the service of a thematics of art. Neither theme nor form, formless is, as Bataille himself expressed it, a job. The job of Formless: A User's Guide is to explore the power of the informe. A stunning new map of twentieth-century art emerges from this reconceptualization and from the brilliantly original analyses of the work of Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Lucio Fontana, Cindy Sherman, Claes Oldenburg, Jean Dubuffet, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta-Clark, among others.

    To gather interedt and understanding of the project, a wealth of materials were created, fleshing out a new heroic adventurer who turned from a prince to an assassin. A ballet of new moves were imagined for this stealth-slayer, and the traversing of giant cityscapes, populated by crowds of individually intelligent citizens, was proposed. The four years of building Assassin's Creed from the ground up had begun.

    Interestingly, abstract expressionism is considered to be the first movement originating in America to have a worldwide influence. Two very different sub-categories of the movement developed: action painting (exemplified notably by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock) and color field painting, made most famous by Mark Rothko. Abstract expressionists strove to express pure emotion directly on canvas, via color and especially texture (the surface quality of the brushstroke), by embracing accidents, and celebrating painting itself as a communicative action. Artists featured: William Baziotes, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Theodoros Stamos, Clyfford Still, Mark Tobey, Bradley Walter Tomlin.

    This volume, prepared by an expert in the field, is devoted exclusively to just that. With its clear, concise text, its almost 200 excellent illustrations, and its overall life-drawing approach, the book provides valuable guidelines on how best to portray faces, features, and heads. There is probably no better instructor to turn to than George B. Bridgman. He brings to the subject both his expertise as an artist and his fifty years' experience as lecturer and teacher at the Art Students League of New York. Throughout the book, he places as much emphasis on perspective and planes as on anatomy. In this way, you'll develop a more precise understanding of each feature, the head and face in general, the relationship between features, and the relationship between a specific feature and the face or head. Mr. Bridgman's consideration of the head includes such topics as the head at eye level and below eye level; planes of the head; and round and square forms. Four features — eye, nose, mouth, ear — are dealt with in detail. Sections on light and shade, comparative measurements, and principles of cube and oval construction further enhance the scope of the book. The finely executed drawings complement the textual material, illustrating all important concepts.  Of special value is the author's inclusion of the work of famous portrait artists. Vermeer, Hals, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Louise Elisabeth LeBrun — these are the people who made portraiture a master art; and you'll be able to study, up close and at your leisure, the qualities that let their work achieve the status it did.

    The 16 project-based lessons show readers step-by-step the key techniques for working with InDesign CS6. Readers learn what they need to know to create engaging page layouts using InDesign CS6. This completely revised CS6 edition covers the new tools for adding PDF form fields, linking content, and creating alternative layouts for digital publishing. The companion CD includes all the lesson files that readers need to work along with the book. This thorough, self-paced guide to Adobe InDesign CS6 is ideal for beginning users who want to master the key features of this program. Readers who already have some experience with InDesign can improve their skills and learn InDesign's newest features. "The Classroom in a Book series is by far the best training material on the market. Everything you need to master the software is included: clear explanations of each lesson, step-by-step instructions, and the project files for the students." -Barbara Binder, Adobe Certified Instructor, Rocky Mountain Training Classroom in a Book(R), the best-selling series of hands-on software training workbooks, helps you learn the features of Adobe software quickly and easily. Classroom in a Book offers what no other book or training program does-an official training series from Adobe Systems Incorporated, developed with the support of Adobe product experts. All of Peachpit's eBooks contain the same content as the print edition. You will find a link in the last few pages of your eBook that directs you to the media files.Helpful tips:If you are able to search the book, search for "Where are the lesson files?"Go to the very last page of the book and scroll backwards.You will need a web-enabled device or computer in order to access the media files that accompany this ebook. Entering the URL supplied into a computer with web access will allow you to get to the files.Depending on your device, it is possible that your display settings will cut off part of the URL. To make sure this is not the case, try reducing your font size and turning your device to a landscape view. This should cause the full URL to appear.

    Blessed with an unerring eye, he tackles a myriad of subjects with wit, poetry, and perspicacity, examining and questioning the art before him while reveling in the power and beauty of language. His writing springs from a desire to be understood by all readers, and a determination to help them engage with art of every kind.Covering subjects drawn from a broad canvas of the history of art—from ancient Greece, Mexico, and Byzantium, through Raphael, Rubens, and Rembrandt, to Bruce Nauman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and John Currin—the writings collected here seek out with precision and economy the essence of the individual artist or work under discussion, but they never lose sight of the bigger picture: What is beauty? What does it mean to be an American artist? What can the art we produce and admire tell us about ourselves?With an imaginative introduction—twenty questions, each one posed to Schjeldahl by a different artist or writer—this collection will appeal to anyone who considers the experience of art, and of writing on art, an invitation to a voyage.Coverage includes:     • large-scale exhibitions at leading institutions around the world     • shows at private galleries     • profiles of prominent members of the art world     • personal accounts of time spent with artists     • the influences of museum spaces on our experience of art

    Including articles by photographers from Edward Weston to Jo Spence, as well as key thinkers like Roland Barthes, Victor Burgin and Susan Sontag, the essays trace the development of ideas about photography. Each themed section features an editor's introduction setting ideas and debates in their historical and theoretical context.Sections include: Reflections on Photography; Photographic Seeing; Coding and Rhetoric; Photography and the Postmodern; Photo-digital; Documentary and Photojournalism; The Photographic Gaze; Image and Identity; Institutions and Contexts.

    Serving as both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting and as a text on how to interpret social history from the style of pictures in a given historical period, this new edition to Baxandall's pre-eminent scholarly volume examines early Renaissance painting, and explains how the style of painting in any society reflects the visual skills and habits that evolve out of daily life. Renaissance painting, for example, mirrors the experience of such activities as preaching, dancing, and gauging barrels. The volume includes discussions of a wide variety of painters, including Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Stefano di Giovanni, Sandro Botticelli, Masaccio, Luca Signorelli, Boccaccio, and countless others. Baxandall also defines and illustrates sixteen concepts used by a contemporary critic of painting, thereby assembling the basic equipment needed to explore fifteenth-century art.

    Goya (1746-1828) was the most original artist of his time and this work touches upon his versatility in differing media and portayal of emotions.

    A new generation of artists--as well as some who never abandoned figurative painting in the first place--is relishing the solitary, slow, subtle set of processes involved in not just painting, but painting people. They are choosing paint's unique ability to distill a lifetime of events rather than photography's glimpse of a frozen moment. Painting People, edited by the prominent London art historian and critic Charlotte Mullins, unites and contrasts the work of a key group of artists from around the world, and investigates their richly varied accomplishments in lucid text with detailed commentaries, accompanied by more than 150 reproductions. The list of contributing artists is stellar, ranging from photo-based painters like Luc Tuymans, Peter Doig and Marlene Dumas to Pop artists like Sigmar Polke and Alex Katz, photorealists like Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter, Neoexpressionists like Cecily Brown, and comics-inspired painters like Yoshitomo Nara, Inka Essenhigh and Takashi Murakami. There are erotic grotesques from John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage, meditations on the muse by Elizabeth Peyton and Lucian Freud, "Repro-realistic" work from Neo Rauch and of course self-portraits by Philip Akkerman and Marcel Dzama, among others.